epigraphy

Epigraphy is the scholarly study of inscriptions as historical sources. It covers texts on durable materials such as stone, metal, ceramic, or plaster, carved, painted, or stamped on monuments, altars, tombs, and public buildings. Epigraphists analyze language, script, dating, authorship, and context to interpret the text and distinguish the written record from the object that bears it. It complements palaeography and philology.

Fieldwork, conservation, and careful reading of inscriptional remains are core practices. Reading may require decipherment of scripts, reconstruction of broken texts, and transliteration or translation. Dating often relies on palaeographic features, stylistic analysis, archaeological context, or cross-references with dated historical sources. Digital epigraphy uses high-resolution imaging, 3D scanning, and online corpora to document and compare texts.

Inscriptions may convey decrees, laws, dedicatory or votive offerings, epitaphs, membership lists, census data, or religious formulas. They appear on public monuments, temples, tombs, stelae, altars, inscription tablets, and everyday objects. The study often employs catalogs or corpora such as Latin and Greek collections, which assemble texts, editions, and bibliographic information for comparison.

Epigraphy has a central role in ancient history, archaeology, linguistics, and anthropology. It yields direct statements about politics, religion, social structure, and daily life that may not be preserved in literary texts. Epigraphy also documents linguistic variation, script development, and cultural contact across regions and periods, contributing to reconstructions of languages, chronology, and interpretations of material culture.

Historically, epigraphy emerged from antiquarian collecting and inscriptions study in the 18th and 19th centuries and matured as a specialized discipline with publication standards and digital advances since the late 20th century.